by Rob Dinerman, College Squash Historian
A two-time first-team All-American and College Individuals finalist during the mid-1970’s at Fordham University, and later a highly ranked pro on the WPSA pro hardball tour that had such a memorable 15-year run from the late 1970’s into the early 1990’s, Bill Andruss also was the first American player to crack the top 35 of the world softball rankings and the first as well to move to Europe and dedicate several years to the softball game. He credits the dedication to a craft that he first acquired as a college squash player (and later an inductee into Fordham’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1982) through repetition, routine and practice for providing the crucial foundation, both for his achievements during his 10 years as a professional squash player and when he then transitioned into what became an extraordinarily successful 39-year career in real estate before he retired in 2024.
Andruss played No. 1 throughout his years at Fordham, culminating in a senior 1974-75 season in which he first won the prestigious University Club of New York college invitational during the Christmas holidays in late December — defeating defending champion and reigning College Individuals champion Juan deVillafranca 3-0 in the final — and then reached the finals of the College Individuals at Princeton a few months later with wins over Williams College No. 1 Frank Giammattei and Princeton No. 1 Arif Sarfraz before losing a close four-game final to deVillafranca. That was the first time that the men’s Individual final was contested between two non-Ivy League players (it has happened just once since then when Bates College’s Ahmed Abdel Khalek defeated Rochester’s Ryosei Kobayashi in 2016). Playing for Fordham’s longtime coach, Bob Hawthorn, Andruss developed a game based on excellent stroking fundamentals and a powerful conditioning base that enabled him to wear down his opponents and melt their resolve.
After graduating that spring with a Bachelor’s degree in Business — and being honored as the recipient of Fordham’s inaugural Vince Lombardi Athlete of the Year Award during the graduation ceremony — Andruss spent most of the next three years in Europe learning and competing in the international (i.e. softball) game, attaining a No. 32 world ranking and playing on the U.S. team (composed of himself, Tom Page, Gil Mateer and Peter Briggs) that entered the 1976 World Team Championships in London. During his years overseas, he became almost certainly the first American to realize that the softball game would eventually displace hardball in America- a good 15 years before it happened! Andruss tried to communicate what he foresaw to USSRA President Ted Friel, even traveling to Philadelphia to meet Friel in person. Somewhat understandably, since hardball squash was at its peak of popularity during that late-1970’s time frame, neither Friel nor anyone associated with squash in the United States took Andruss’s prediction seriously.
Returning to the U.S. in the Autumn of 1978, Andruss played for seven seasons on the WPSA Tour while also working as a teaching pro, first at the Uptown Racquet Club in Manhattan and then at the Field Club of Greenwich and the Southport Racquet Club. During most of that time, he was ranked at the fringes of the top 10 in a career highlighted by his advance to more than a half-dozen semifinals (most notably the 1979 WPSA Championships, in which he defeated Mexican superstar Mario Sanchez) and while playing primarily a no-frills, error-free, “blue-collar” game in which he would grind his way to victory – the exact style that had worked so well for him at Fordham. He kept up his softball game as well, twice winning the Hyder Cup (the premier softball event in the U.S. at the time) and serving as team captain of the 1981 U.S. squad (whose members also included Stu Goldstein, Ned Edwards and Ted Gross) that finished seventh — the best American result ever to that point — in the World Team Championships in Sweden. Andruss also was selected twice (in 1983 and 1984) by his peers to be captain of the U.S. Loews Cup team that had had an annual five-man competition against Canada as part of the WPSA tour schedule, and he was named Chairman of the WPSA Teaching Pro Committee as well.
Andruss left the WPSA tour after the 1984-85 season and embarked on a career in real estate in the Greenwich (CT) area, an endeavor in which he learned that the same one-step-at-a-time relentless focus and gradual but inexorable progress that had led to his squash success would serve him equally well in this new undertaking. The testimonials about him from his real estate clients – especially the ones that praise his (direct quote) “reputation for honesty and a hard-working approach premised on patience and understanding” – match to a tee what those who played squash with him, took lessons from him and watched his matches characterized as the Andruss persona during his playing days.
The personal integrity and thoroughly professional approach to his real estate career earned him a stellar reputation as an advocate for and advisor to his clients, whose strong knowledge and vast experience on the entire spectrum of the market enabled him to price and successfully negotiate homes on every level. He was named to the Board of Directors of the Greenwich Association of Realtors and served as the Board’s Treasurer in 2024. For several years, he was a financial sponsor of the Tournament of Champions (ToC), an important stop on the PSA pro singles tour, which has been played on a portable four-glass-wall court in Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Station ever since the late 1990’s. When the 2025 edition of this tournament hosted the College Individuals for the first time in 2025, it marked the milestone 50th anniversary of when Andruss himself had advanced to the final of that event in 1975.
It is a sign of the respect that Andruss has earned in each of his multiple professions that, when Todd Harrity recently retired after an 11-year PSA career and was uncertain about what his next career move would be, longtime ToC Chairman John Nimick put him in touch with Andruss, who gets the same kind of fulfillment in mentoring the current era’s professional squash players about their post-squash careers that he took for the past four decades in helping clients make and act upon a singularly important decision, namely where they live. Andruss, who still resides in Greenwich with Becky, his wife of more than 30 years, is deservedly known for having accomplished an incredibly successful transition from a squash career to a business career, in each case by following principles that he initially developed a half-century ago during his college years on the leafy campus of Fordham University.
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Rob Dinerman has written five books about college squash, most recently A Century Of Champions: 100 Years Of College Squash, 1923-2023, which was released in March 2024. His most recent book, Racquets At Rest: Remembering 40 Lives That Shaped The Game Of Squash In America, was released in February 2025.
